14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have announced the formation of the so-called Global Internet Forum to Combat Terrorism, a new alliance whose purpose will be removing content supporting terrorism and violent extremism.
The four tech giants will collaborate on technologies that will help detect terrorist material online, while at the same time removing links to content that’s flagged as extremism and online hate.
The alliance is expected to expand with additional members in the coming months and years, and the four companies say they will also collaborate with other parties, including here governments and non-governmental organizations.
“The spread of terrorism and violent extremism is a pressing global problem and a critical challenge for us all. We take these issues very seriously, and each of our companies have developed policies and removal practices that enable us to take a hard line against terrorist or violent extremist content on our hosted consumer services,” the four companies explain in a joint venture.
“We believe that by working together, sharing the best technological and operational elements of our individual efforts, we can have a greater impact on the threat of terrorist content online.”
European Union pressure
One particular focus of the collaboration will be improving joint technical projects that can help detect terrorism content using machine learning.
Microsoft, as one of the pioneers of machine learning systems, will play an important role in this regard, though each company will contribute to new solutions and define standard transparency reporting methods for content removal.
“The new forum builds on initiatives including the EU Internet Forum and the Shared Industry Hash Database; discussions with the UK government; and the conclusions of the recent G7 and European Council meetings,” the announcement reveals, suggesting that this new alliance comes following requests from the European Union who have asked tech giants to increase fight against terrorism online.
Other big tech companies are also expected to join this forum in near future, so expect more news on this front very soon.